Oppurtunity Rover on Mars

The Oppurtunity rover has successfully touched down on Mars. It touched down at about 12:05 EST and stopped rolling about 20 minutes later. It is sending out a strong signal. Pictures should come by morning.

It probably wasn't rolling for the 20 minutes. They interpreted the fluctuation in signal strength as a sign that the lander was still rolling but this wasn't the case. Since the lander stopped on one of the side petals the UHF antenna was pointed at Earth, but also bouncing off of the martian ground. This caused a multi-pass/beading effect which caused the signal fluctuations. It was probably only rolling for about the expected 10 min.

This is great news. 2 rovers on Mars! Hope Spirit gets well soon. It looks like the OS stored in the Flash memory was corrupted when it went to sleep improperly.

Wow! The pictures from Opportunity look really cool! Left me speechless! Very devoid of rocks sans the large angular outcroppings. A smooth flowing surface. Those angular rocks are like nothing I've ever seen before in my life. Fantastic images! You can see very very very fine sand and soft sand. You can actually see imprints from the seams in the airbags in the sand.

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